5 Ways to Generate Leads from a LinkedIn B2B Company Page
Wed, Jun 6, 2012
Many B2B companies have been successful at generating leads from LinkedIn, but there are features of a company page that B2B marketers are just not aware of. Most B2B companies have company pages on LinkedIn where they include a keyword-stuffed paragraph or two of marketing-speak. It also shows the employees who work at the company. This is the most basic option for LinkedIn.
1. Products and Services
The first thing that you need to do is enable the Products and Services function of the company page and begin adding products and services. This is where the action happens on the company page. Recommendations aren’t given for companies. They are given for products. Several of the follow lead generating suggestions are based on areas in the product and services tab. Note that you can be flexible with the definition of what a product is. If you have a compelling ebook that is appropriate for a LinkedIn audience, add that as a product. You can direct visitors to a download page with a lead form to receive the ebook.
2. Free Banners
Want to test some new creative ideas? Want to test some landing pages? LinkedIn gives you three free banner ads at the top of the products and services page. Create images that are 640×220 pixels, upload them to your page and add a unique URL, preferably to a landing page, and you have free ads. All you need to do now is make sure you are directing traffic to your LinkedIn products and services page.
3. Personal Contacts
Prospects don’t always like filling out contact forms because they never know who is going to contact them, but what if you could show them real people, with pictures and everything, that they could connect to for more information. This personalization of contact can be set by product, so consider adding people who have a high enough profile in your business or who have a title that makes sense for the contact. This can be viewed by some prospects as a purely “for more information” request about the product or service, so product managers can be a good fit, but these are leads. Clicking on this link is someone raising their hand and expressing interest.
4. Video with Call to Action
Each product and service entry has a space to link to a YouTube video, which appears embedded on the page. Video is another way to tell the story of your products. There are many ways to include calls-to-action in a YouTube video, which should be considered for the ones on your LinkedIn page. Everything you do on this page should provide enough information for prospects to decide that your products and services should be in the consideration phase of their buying process. You need to make it easy for them to take the next step and become a lead.
5. Status Updates
Companies can share status updates with those following the company. This is different than sharing information on your personal profile. You should have a content plan for sharing on your company profile. Share a mix of third party articles, company blog posts, links to ebooks and webinars, employee information and other content appropriate for your LinkedIn audience. Cross promote LinkedIn groups and events to continue to build your audience across LinkedIn. The main thing to do for lead gen is to make sure you are providing compelling offers with calls-to-action so prospects can become leads for your B2B company.
Have you taken advantage of all the lead gen levers that LinkedIn offers on your B2B company page?
Jeffrey L. Cohen is the Managing Editor of SocialMediaB2B.com. Follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffreylcohen or on Google+.
Tags: B2B marketing, Lead Generation, linkedin, social media lead generation
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I confess, I wasn’t using the Product Pages until reading your post today. Thank you! However, the toggles for free banners and status updates do not appear to me. Maybe I just need to keep looking around the interface.
-T
Tom: If you are the admin for the company page, you should see the status box at the top. To find the banners, go to the product tab, click admin tools button on the right and choose edit. There are several options on the page, and step 3 is where you add the banners.
Thanks a million, Jeffery. These are pearls of social media wisdom!
Agreed! Very helpful. I can’t find the ability to add personal contacts in the admin panel, any thoughts Jeff? Thanks!
Caroline: Let me know what you are trying to do. Do you mean adding other admins? If so, go to the Company Page and click Admin Tools and click the edit button. This will show you the admins and let you add more. Note that you have to be connected to them to add them. If this isn’t what you are looking for, email me.
Thanks for your help Jeff! Contacts can be added for the Careers and Products page (or tab) but not the Overview page, interesting! Still a great feature to utilize, appreciate the helpful blog post!
Hi Jeff! Thanks for the great article – we have a company page but definitely will be revamping it after your tips! I have the same question as Caroline…tip #3, how do you get the contact us box to show up under products/services tab with actual employees? Thanks!
Really nice.. Will implement the banner ads for sure.. We are also in process to create a video, so will use that too soon
Thanks
Sudesh
@Sydney – you have click on the specific product. So go to your Products & Services page then click on a specific product/service, ie. “Equipment Valuation Services” – then you can add a contact. I was talking to Jeff about how this is a bit counterintuitive since viewers have to dig into each category to find a contact. In your case looks like have a number of different options so it could be helpful to have different contacts. I’d love a better option to show a couple contacts on the main products/services tab!
Thanks Caroline! Got it…and yes, it would be wonderful if they had contacts on the main products/services page, but I guess contacts on each product/service is better than none!
Didn’t know a few of these like the product/service page, very good advice. There’s a lot of functionality built into many of these social tools – need to tap into it all to make the most of it. Thanks for the tips.
These are great tips. LinkedIn is the best place to generate leads and surely following these tips will double our leads.
From our social media management experience Jeffrey, nothing even comes close to generating leads from LinkedIn as does collecting groups and posting to them all Holus Bolus. Not spamming, but high value content and/or tips ‘n tricks or free resources. LinkedIn notifies all group members individually by email. How’s that? You can get to thousands of prospects this way. But just thought I’d say that I appreciate the very act of distributing this pleasing blog posting. You’re batting 1000! Looking really forward to viewing more. All the best of British luck to you.
Great blog post, and very helpful. I just started helping a client with their LinkedIn company page just before I saw this, so it gave me a good check list to review.
One question: how do you get the free banner ads? Do you need to go through the usual process of creating ads, targeting your audience, etc.? I just don’t see an option anywhere to add a banner to the Products & Services page. Thanks!
Tom: When I look at Step 3 in the Products & Services, it says “Name your product or service”. You can add a 100×80 pixel image in Step 4, but I don’t see anywhere where you can upload a free banner. Can you clarify?
I always wanted to use linkedin to get more referrals, but I can’t really send, get referrals through it. Isn’t “referral key” or “gazingle” a better place if you’re looking to exchange referrals with other professionals?
Great stuff, Jeffrey! I recently set up my employer’s company and product pages (www.linkedin.com/company/vista-training), which are now about 90% complete. But I’m still not clear on how to attract visitors to these pages.
It sounds like posting helpful content to different Linkedin groups is a great way to generate leads, but those would like to our website, not our company and product pages.
Always nice to get practical advice that even the little guys can use. Thanks very much Jeffrey.
LinkedIn is considered as one of the fertile grounds for B2B marketers. And I do agree with it. Thanks for the tips Jeffrey it could help us generate more technology sales leads from LinkedIn.
Thank you for sharing this Jeffrey. Some great actionable tips and examples.
Just updated the company page to add a services section. Thanks for all the great information. I cant agree more with the personal contact set up! I hope to see some results soon.
The feature to add 3 banners as well as the big brand image on the company home page just shows that LinkedIn is becoming more visual. It has to in order to keep up with the enormous growth of graphics in social media.
Jeffrey, thanks for a great article! I’ve already implemented some of your suggestions, and am talking to a graphic designer about new artwork that’s optimized for our LinkedIn company page.